


And When You Kiss Me, I Am Happy Enough To Die

by sovereign thunder (old_gods_of_asgard)



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M, Rambling, Romance, mentions of past relationships - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 21:28:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/old_gods_of_asgard/pseuds/sovereign%20thunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tendo isn't exactly blessed with luck, and Raleigh doesn't have the best track record.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And When You Kiss Me, I Am Happy Enough To Die

**Author's Note:**

> Set about 2-3 years after the movie.
> 
> This took about two hours to write, and it can get a little rambly and messy at times. It's still unbeta'd, so if you see anything, let me know (e.g. I have the baaaad habit of using way too many commas, and sometimes just forgetting them where they're actually needed). I'm doing something a little bigger (specifically, a couple of follow ups to Amaranth) but it never hurts to write other stuff in between to get the creative juices flowing. At least...I hope it doesn't. Oh, gosh.

Raleigh sits in the office chair and watches Tendo work. Fingers stained with ink and grease, roughened from years of hard work sketch out plans and designs, tries to brainstorm what to do with Cherno and Crimson. Cherno is practically untouchable due to the damage and Crimson was built for three perfectly synched pilots, and with the Kaiju threat eliminated there’s no need for giant protective robots anymore. Tendo talks, and he talks for a long time about restoring it and setting it up outside of the Shatterdome as a reminder of what humanity had to go through to save itself. Tendo talks about harmony and transcendence and working through bullshit, and Raleigh listens because when Tendo talks it’s like water in the desert. Raleigh listens, and he tries to block out the part of his brain that’s all Yancy, tries to ignore the niggling thoughts in the back of his brain. _Maybe_ , he thinks _maybe this is your fault._

It isn’t right to blame Yancy for this, thought. Yancy’s been gone a while. Raleigh can’t really fault a ghost for his own stupid feelings and his own stupid heart. He knows, at the end of the day, that what he feels for Tendo is real and has nothing to do with Yancy, but guilt keeps him from owning up to it. Guilt reminds him how hard Tendo hugged him after Raleigh came back; guilt reminds him that Raleigh abandoned his future brother-in-law even though they shared the same pain. Guilt reminds him that he also punched Yancy in the jaw when he found out that he and Tendo had fucked, all because of what Yancy said. They’d known him for two years by then, he wasn’t a groupie or a fly.

Raleigh watches Tendo work because he wants to keep it solid. He wants to see what Yancy saw and what Chuck saw, wants to see if he can see something else. Raleigh’s grateful because Tendo never seems to ask him how he feels about it, just accepts it, and he knows why he’s grateful: if Tendo were to ask him what he felt, why he was with him, why he waited nearly a year to say it the first time and almost two years more to come back and say it again, Raleigh might break down. He might dump his fears on him. Tendo would see him for the prideful coward he really was, would know he felt too proud to say that he’s letting what Yancy felt when he was torn from the Conn-Pod influence their relationship. It’d be tossing poison in the well. It makes Raleigh feel ashamed.

Yeah, Raleigh has a lot of guilt in his life over dumb shit. He just hopes it doesn’t make him fuck up what is probably only the third good thing to happen to him in five years.

 

Tendo doesn’t talk a lot around Raleigh, even though he knows he has a lot to say. It isn’t fair, he thinks, because Raleigh just looks so much like Yancy that it hurts him, physically. When they lie together late at night after a good fucking, Tendo forces himself to stay awake. When they’ve showered and climbed back into bed, Tendo sits up and Raleigh rests his head on the smaller man’s stomach and he sleeps easily. Tendo watches him under the guise of reading and only when Raleigh’s breathing quietly does he put it down and just watch.

Raleigh is nothing like Yancy, or Chuck, before him. His looks are one thing; Chuck could have been the Beckets’ cousin. Personality wise, he thinks putting them all in the same room could have strangled the Throat all on its own.  Raleigh was a hothead and carried too many burdens for someone so young, and Tendo had no doubt that some of those burdens included the others’ deaths. Tendo doesn’t want to talk about that; he doesn’t want to ask Raleigh what it’s like to be the man who saved the world and still lost the war. It’s not that he doesn’t care, but more that he’s scared of what Raleigh will say to him.

And, more importantly, _about_ him. Because it isn’t like Tendo doesn’t know how Raleigh looks at him; Yancy and Chuck would look at him the exact same way. He doesn’t understand how he could be so unlucky for most of his life and still wind up loving three of the greatest men he’s ever known, but he knows that luck runs out and so does love sometimes. It’s selfish, he knows, and but he doesn’t want to open his mouth and ask what Raleigh feels and  end up ruining what could be the last good thing he has. Outside of work, Tendo has…well, nothing. All of his relationships have been built up in the Academy and the Domes; he has no family left. If Tendo opens his mouth and asks and spoils that, and Raleigh _leaves_ , he will literally have nothing. Tendo couldn’t live with that.

At least this way, he thinks, he can fall asleep. He knows that if he just plays it cool and keeps his mouth shut, things will probably work out – and at the end of the world, that’s all he could ask for. 


End file.
